Canadian Senate to Vote on Recreational Cannabis This Week

Since the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the Cannabis Act in the Spring of 2017, the cannabis industry in Canada has grown aggressively. The announcement set the stage for public and private companies to position themselves to take advantage of the upcoming legal recreational cannabinoid market. Companies in the sector have been acquired, capital raises have been completed, and finally the vote is set to happen this week to legalize cannabis for adults in Canada.

The senate has been postponing the vote in order to allow the ideal amount time to debate how to properly enforce legal cannabis throughout the country. Some topics under discussion were the amount of cannabis plants to allow Canadian residences to grow on private property and the amount of cannabis that Canadian citizens can legally travel from providence to providence with.

A total of 40 different updated amendments were passed on the Cannabis Act before the independents, conservatives, and liberals felt comfortable to take the new legislation to a vote. If passed it is likely that it will take up to 2-3 months to properly set these new regulations in place.

The possibly new legal cannabis industry in Canada has garnered attention from private companies in the United States, such as MedMen, who looks to take full advantage of the opportunity to expand operations into Canada and raise investment capital. MedMen took their company public on the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) this past week and is currently trading under the ticker symbol CSE: MMEN. The company has entered the public Canadian cannabis market with an evaluation of $1.65 billion dollars, making it already one of the highest valued companies on the stock exchange.